Twitter

Online Event Promotion

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

March Madness is in full swing here at Site-Seeker (and I’m not just talking about basketball). With the Syracuse Chamber Show and seminar, a CONNSTEP sponsored seminar on Internet marketing for manufacturers, and three webinars – things are beginning to get a little crazy. Which is why I’ve decided to walk away from real work for a while and take some time to fill you in on some online event promotion ideas I’ve come up with recently.

Trade shows cost a lot of money so driving visitors to your booth is really important for your ROI, but of course you already know that. What you may not know is that you don’t have to wait for the day of the show to start driving traffic to your booth. Promoting your presence at a trade show or an event is an element that should come months before the actual event.

Social media sites like Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook have made it easier than ever to announce your presence. Here are a few ways you can make use of social media to promote your events:

Twitter Advice

Tweet about your booth or event regularly (don’t over do it, but make it known you are going to be present at the show).
Find out if there is a hashtag for the event and use it in your tweets.
Search for other twitter users who have been tweeting about the even and engage with them.
DON’T FORGET – it’s always a good idea to tweet at the event itself, you never know how many people are on the fence about coming and your tweets might be the thing that motivates them to show up.

Linkedin Advice

RSVP to a linkedin “event”. If one doesn’t exist, create it.
Push the event details out to your local connections.
Participate in conversations centered around the event in groups. If there aren’t any, start one!
Update your status before you leave for the event.

Other Ways to Promote

Create an email marketing campaign to send to your contacts.
If you have some extra cash laying around, create a Pay Per Click campaign for a landing page on your website that has all the details.
Write and submit a press release

This really is just a start. There are of course many different recipes for success these days, and being creative is the secret ingredient. So what are your ideas? What things have you done to promote your events? I’d love to know!

Posted in Events & Shows, Social Media, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Posted by Dan Salamone

My 5 Favorite Management Tips for Twitter

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

I am often asked – “How can you possibly have time to tweet and keep up with Linkedin and everything else out there? Don’t you have a job to do??”

First of all, engaging with social media is a big part of my job. It has provided me both professional and personal returns in a very large way. (Check out my post on My Social Media ROI).

But having said that, yes it is hard to keep all those balls in the air and be as productive as possible. Here are the tools that help me manage my social media life without spending all day “being social”.

1) News sources: I like igoogle for staying ahead of information and having fresh interesting content to share. I have found that utilizing an igoogle homepage with my favorite news sources and industry blog right at my fingertips makes it more productive to quickly scan and read things that grab my attention.

2) Twitter & your community: I like Hootsuite. I have tried possibly every twitter tool available. I was a fan of tweetdeck, but finally switched over to Hootsuite because of the delayed tweet feature. I like to consistently interact with my community so having the ability to queue up tweets for the day allows me to focus more on my work and checkin with Twitter only periodically. I don’t like to follow people who send too many tweets at once, which I find helps me keep the more relevant communications at the top. With the delayed tweet feature you can post several thoughts, but space them out so you aren’t burying people with your info all at once.

3) Research and monitoring: Again, Hootsuite is great for this. I create search columns for terms relevant to clients and prospects I am working with. I also have search columns established for clients and their brands – One of the ways to stay ahead of their online reputation.

4) Measuring engagement: I like bit.ly’s URL shortener with its easy click tracking, but not sure it is better than any of the others. I like having a bit.ly account so I can monitor click activity for information I share. It helps to know what people find valuable and interesting and what didn’t engage people.

5) Building a quality community: To help me add valuable twitterers to my community I refernce Hubspots Grader page quite a bit. You can research top twitters by location. It helps to make sure I am engaging with people in my area that are relevant to my goals and objectives with social media.

There are a TON of great tools out there, and everyone has one that matches their goals, objectives, and personal style.

I would love to hear about all the tools you are using to manage your online presence and why you like them! I may even be inclined to switch .